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WORLD> Europe
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Investigators ponder what happened to Air France
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-06-02 15:08 "It sounds like something that evolved into a problem, not something that happened instantly," Voss said. "It would appear that their systems were degrading but we don't know why they were degrading."
Air France-KLM CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon said the pilot had 11,000 hours of flying experience, including 1,700 hours flying this aircraft. Experts said the absence of a mayday call meant something happened very quickly. "The conclusion to be drawn is that something catastrophic happened on board that has caused this airplane to ditch in a controlled or an uncontrolled fashion," Jane's Aviation analyst Chris Yates told The Associated Press. "Potentially it went down very quickly and so quickly that the pilot on board didn't have a chance to make that emergency call." If all 228 people were killed, it would be the deadliest commercial airline disaster since Nov. 12, 2001, when an American Airlines jetliner crashed in the New York City borough of Queens during a flight to the Dominican Republic, killing 265 people. Airbus spokeswoman Maggie Bergsma said it was the first fatal accident of a A330-200 since a test flight in 1994 went wrong, killing seven people in Toulouse. The Airbus A330-200 is a twin-engine, long-haul, medium-capacity passenger jet that can hold up to 253 passengers. There are 341 in use worldwide, flying up to 7,760 miles (12,500 kilometers) a trip.
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